There were 184 wreaths — one for every life lost when a plane hit the Pentagon 10 years ago — and stoically and solemnly military members laid them on benches inside the Pentagon Memorial. The benches mark each life lost, and they served as the touching, silent focal point for the 1,600 people who watched nearby on a big-screen TV as the wreaths of white flowers were gently laid, one by one, in a patriotic ceremony at the Pentagon marking 10 years since the terrorist attacks. Continue reading and view a gallery of photos after the jump.

@capriSUNshine

With an enormous U.S. flag draped over the plane’s impact point on the Pentagon’s rock-hard wall, Vice President Joe Biden, his voice rising, remembered the attack as a “declaration of war by stateless actors bent on changing our way of life.” The goal: “To break us.”

“They did not,” he said, “know us.”

Instead, the attacks galvanized an entire “new generation of patriots — the 9/11 generation,” Biden said, noting that nearly 3 million men and women had signed up for armed-services duty since then “to finish a war begun here that day.”

Family members, friends and relatives of those who died — there were also more than 100 survivors in attendance — listened mostly silently, occasionally wiping away tears, as Biden, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen spoke of the lives lost and the heroes who sprinted to rescue strangers.

At times solemn, at other times decidedly patriotic, the three men delivered their remarks with the Pentagon Memorial in the backdrop, in between the Navy Sea Chanters Chorus singing “Amazing Grace” and the Army band belting “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

“Dreams were shattered,” Mullen said. “Futures were instantly altered. Hopes were tragically dashed. You come here — we all come here — to remember those hopes, and to mourn, and to honor.”

“It is difficult to believe,” Panetta said, “that 10 years ago this was the scene of horrific fire and smoke.”

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who helped first responders outside the Pentagon in the moments after the attack, was in attendance.

Later in the day President Obama laid a wreath at the memorial and, with his hands clasped and head bowed, observed a moment of silence. With his wife Michelle, the president then visited with families, posing for numerous photos.

“I was very touched and moved by the special wreath-laying ceremony,” said Lisa Dolan of Alexandria, whose husband, Navy Capt. Robert Dolan, was killed in the Pentagon. “That was very, very moving for me. It was incredible to watch them all marching out with the wreaths, standing at attention and laying the wreaths on each memorial.”

The Dolans’ daughter Rebecca said her father would have been moved by the ceremony, particularly the wreath laying.

“It feels like everything happened yesterday,” she said. “It doesn’t matter which anniversary it is.”

WP